Opinion

Saturday, 4 June 2016

Are bhakts outnumbering the rest?

Over the past few years, we have witnessed the emergence of a group of
people called bhakts and their ever-increasing number has been one of the grave
concerns for many across the nation.Ironically, though, the ones who are annoyed by the presence of bhakts
in a progressive society are the same people who label every random individual
as a bhakt.

A bhakt can be anyone, an ordinary person like you and me who holds a
different opinion to those who assign the title, an imaginary person or a group
of people who they vilify in order to achieve vindication, or just anyone they
lose an argument to.

Bhakts are primarily created on social media, which is the closest to
what we have achieved when we talk about a platform that gives everyone an
opportunity to voice his or her opinion.Here we can question anyone and understand how even the most informed
individuals respond when pushed beyond the comfort zone of one way
communication.Some turn abusive, some
make personal attacks, while others turn dismissive to avoid the need to
explain why the person is wrong.And the
fact that most of the bhakts are created on social media and not in real world
is a clear indicator of what leads to the classification.

Although, most bhakts can be called supporters of BJP, being awarded
the title during the course of an argument doesn’t necessarily establish the
awardee’s political inclination.They
just don’t endorse certain ideologies all the time.

I am not going into a discussion on who is wrong and who is right, and
it’s virtually impossible for an individual or a group of people to be always
correct.There are instances when we all
make incorrect observations, which leave room for argument.

We can criticize a political party or a politician when it’s due, we
can even correct its supporters when they make unfounded statements, but how
can we be annoyed with people for not concurring with us and for not spewing
venom against a particular party?

Spiteful comments against right wingers from certain individuals have
been relentless.Take for example, this
tweet by Shirish Kunder:

Needless to mention here that this is a mere statement devoid of facts,
but the strange part is the tweet was retweeted by the Chief Minister of Delhi,
which may not be a smart move by a smart CM because a political party cannot
grow without growing its supporter base.And if I am a bhakt, I probably wouldn’t switch my loyalty after reading
this just for the sake of increasing my IQ, although I am sure, even Mr.
Kejriwal wouldn’t want to be known as a leader of a party that has low-IQ
supporters. But the larger question is,
what problem would anyone have with less intelligent people in the society
unless they are constantly troubled by their presence for reasons best known to
them?

As far as Shirish Kunder’s IQ is concerned, he is aware of the fact
that he is far from being hilarious and his acerbic tweets are liked only by individuals
with identical stance towards right wingers who need someone to take their one
dimensional views to a larger audience.Mr.
Kunder’s motive, however, is entirely different and he has achieved what he
wanted to because a decent number of people are now aware of his existence.

But this is not an odd instance when a senior political leader attacked
Narendra Modi’s supporters.Let’s look
at this tweet by Shashi Tharoor.

Which actually is a sign of resignation.Instead of regaining congress’s popularity
through constructive work, he is complaining about people supporting BJP.And his follow-up tweet was funny or rather
ironical.

So basically, only his jokes need to be taken in the right spirit and
those who crack jokes at him are trolls.Yes, according to some, bhakts are solely responsible for all the
trolling on internet.As a matter of fact,
they are allegedly the worst and the most abusive trolls internet has ever
seen.

Now, this is another baseless allegation.I don’t think anyone can point out an
instance when these so called trolls have attacked anyone with filthiest of
abuses.Yes they do criticize
individuals and even poke fun at them, but who doesn’t.If we go through the timeline of Kejriwal, I
don’t think anyone can classify him as anything other than a troll.This following tweet definitely doesn’t fall
under the category of joke or criticism.It’s an abuse.

However, it’s not Kejriwal alone who accused Modi of following his
supporters on Twitter, many have done that before.The problem here is not trolling, the actual
problem is Narendi Modi following common people on Twitter.They wouldn’t have had any issue, if he’d
just followed a few intellectuals and journos who constantly spew bile in the
garb of correctness.

There are innumerable instances of hypocrisy and double standards, and
we have lost count of them, but people can see through the hypocrisy and
wouldn’t concede to the idea of a handful of people misleading everyone by
imposing their subjective views on others.Their acerbic remarks that are predominantly directed to a larger group
may not work unless they are supported by facts.

Bhakts won’t go because they are common men and women of India who
don’t always endorse the views of a particular group of people.And the number will only rise as long as we
keep labeling individuals with what we consider a derogatory remark.A derogatory term can be insulting for a
handful of people but when the group is significantly large, it doesn’t really
matter because so many people cannot be wrong.Accepting the fact could be less troubling than fighting it.